1/22/07

Orlando: Day Two

So this morning we all meet up in the lobby to head out to breakfast and Special Dark is all pimped out. While we are all wearing jeans/shorts, t-shirts and sneakers, he is dressed in slacks, dress shoes, a dress shirt and a suit jacket. WTF? I have no idea. I said "Hey, I can see that pimpin' ain't easy, but is it necessary?" and he said "Eff you. I have to make a good impression." and by 5 pm he had given it up and was dressed like the rest of us. I am still not sure who he was trying to impress.

Our guest speaker at the opening session today was Neil Armstrong. A guy who walked on the fucking moon. How awesome is that? A true American hero. I actually got a little teary when they introduced him. I am a giant pussy when it comes to stuff like that.

Oh, and something I forgot to tell you about -- Last night there was a big party and the theme was gambling and/or arcade games. I'm not sure what they have to do with each other, but there was a bunch of shitty 80's arcade games like centipede and pacman set up, and a few air hockey tables and pool tables. The highlight of the night had to be when Big Tool Scott was playing air hockey like a crazy man and sent the puck flying about 20 feet through the air at roughly mach 3. It smashed directly into some poor bastard's forehead. I think the guy was probably walking around all day today with a red stripe of a welt on his head. I almost peed myself.

Tonight's wine drunk was brought to you by something called "JamFest" which was a party where anyone with any musical "talent" at all can get up on stage and play. I was going to do it, but the drum set was configured for a right-hander, and it was all mic'd up, so there was no way I was going to be able to move the drums around to fit a lefty. We were treated to horrendous versions of "mustang sally", "8675309" and various and sundry Lynyrd Skynyrd songs. It was pretty pathetic. We left when they were trying to get us to do a sing-along. I scored an XXL t-shirt, which I promptly threw into the crowd. I am nothing if not medium.

In our last session of the day, Scott and I were treated to something very special. There was an Asian dude sitting pretty much right next to us that had some sort of nasal issue. Throughout the entire hour-long presentation, he was busily snorting snot. It was the most disgusting thing so far this conference. Each snort was literally 4 seconds long, and the frequency had to be at least once a minute. I don't know how much snot this guy could have possibly had in his head, but during the last few snorts I swear I could feel all the matter in the universe inching its way toward his gaping nostrils. Goddammit people are disgusting.

Me: Yeah, you're Chinese until the Mainlanders do something gross, and you're Taiwanese until someone in the ROC parliament puts women's underdrawers on his opponent's head. Pick a side and stick with it.

Her: What's your point? I'm still not telling [our advisor]. You do it.

Long story short, I did wind up telling our advisor, but I burst into laughter halfway through my speech and he nearly fell over with laughter himself. We put up a sign: "No eating, drinking, or nosepicking at the computers".

Some people are just totally gross! Conferences are a bugger, though, cos you can't pick the people you have to sit with in the conference!! I had a similar experience once and one of my ex-bosses was a permanent "snorter".

WTF-you don't have my number? That seems impossible. Tell Scott to give it to you. He just called me. We are stone buddies-I'm gall, he's kidney. Just FYI I once went to CV's apartment-years ago-and he had a shiny see through dress shirt in his closet. He says he gave it away, but I haven't been back to check. Also he had a tripod set up in his bedroom. Holy shit is that awesome.

I went to a library geek conference in Monterey last October, and ended up sitting by the grossest, smelliest woman ever to dig her way out of the muck and mire TWICE! This woman smelled so bad--it reminded me of the Army when we'd be out in the field for several weeks and the women wouldn't wash their privates and they'd have their periods on top of that.